Reliance head of metrology meets Lord Prior at NPL event

Reliance’s Head of Metrology, David Torr, was part of a select group of delegates invited to meet with Lord Prior of Brampton, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, when he launched the UK Measurement Strategy at the National Physical Laboratory’s (NPL) North of England base in Huddersfield.

As the UK’s National Measurement Institute, NPL led the development of the strategy, which supports the Government’s Industrial Strategy, with its national measurement laboratory partners.

As part of his visit, Lord Prior was keen to meet local businesses who had benefitted from the measurement support services NPL provides. Reliance were one of only six companies invited to attend the high profile event.

Andy Morris, Operations Manager of NPL’s North of England base, explains “Reliance Precision are one of the founder members of the NPL Manufacturer Measurement Network and have engaged with NPL on matters relating to measurement for a number of years. They are recognised as a company that treats measurement and validation of their products very seriously and also as a business that is innovative and forward looking. Reliance were asked to attend the meeting with Lord Prior as a success story, being a company that has demonstrated how good measurement practice has helped them to progress and become innovative, productive and competitive.”

One such example explained to Lord Prior was a project Reliance undertook with a large multi-national company. Components for a new product design required machining to accuracies better than a micron over a continuously changing surface. Whilst Reliance identified they could physically measure the features, they wanted to gain independent validation that the measurements they were recording were of the correct quality. Working alongside the NPL team and using their specialist machinery and software, Reliance were able to prove the validity of their measurements, providing both themselves and their customer the reassurance of their capability to consistently deliver a highly accurate, highly precise component.

David comments “Being asked to attend the launch was a great honour for me. Getting the opportunity to talk to Lord Prior about Reliance and the type of innovative work we are involved in was great, he was very interested. He was particularly impressed with how metrology and inspection are an integral part of our manufacturing process and was keen to hear how NPL in Huddersfield has facilitated us in this. It is a credit to the organisation that they are gaining recognition of the importance of industry in the north and how we are involved in some of the leading-edge manufacturing and inspection technologies.”